BMW expresses 'profound regret' for Nazi ties in public apology

Company heads conveyed deep remorse for its part in facilitating the Third Reich's grip on Germany.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Updated: MARCH 9, 2016 23:56
A vintage car of German luxury carmaker BMW [Illustrative] (photo credit: REUTERS)
A vintage car of German luxury carmaker BMW [Illustrative]
(photo credit: REUTERS)
The German auto manufacturer BMW used its centennial celebration in Munich as a platform to apologize for its implication in the Nazi regime on Monday.
The company heads conveyed deep remorse for the part the company played in facilitating the Third Reich’s grip and expressed their decision to proactively confront this “dark chapter of its past,” Mail Online reported.
The apology continued: “To this day, the enormous suffering this (BMW implication) caused and the fate of many forced laborers remains a matter of the most profound regret.”
During the Nazi stranglehold between the 1930’s and 40s, the auto magnate functioned as the regime’s military supplier and forcibly retained some 50,000 forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners.
BMW manipulated political pathways in the National Socialist Party in order to secure highly profitable bids to manufacture weapons, ammunition, artillery as well as U-boat batteries.
Gabriele Quandt, grandson of BMW patriarch Guenther Quandt, expressed his responsibility to face the crimes his family had committed in the past after a German historian Joachim Scholtyseck compiled a detailed study enumerating the degree to which the Quandt Family was involved in Nazi transgressions.
Scholtyseck concluded that the Quandts were inextricably linked to the crimes of the Nazis, nothing that “the family patriarch was part of the regime,” noted Mail Online.
The apology took place at BMW’s celebratory centennial event in the Munich Olympic Hall that attracted more than 2,000 guests.